Imagine that! Those annoyingly persistent weeds, the bane of every groundskeeper and proud homeowner, actually have a redeeming value. Science Daily reported last month that the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in Germany, has developed a way to make “Rubber from Dandelion Juice” ~

(The researchers) are building the first ever pilot system to extract vast quantities of dandelion rubber for making tires: an important milestone on the path to rubber procurement in Europe.

 
Don’t get too excited about harvesting your own dandelion crop just yet ~

For production, only the Russian variety of our domestic plants can be used […]
 
The natural product obtained in this manner (via juice extraction) exhibited the same quality as the conventional rubber from rubber trees that has been imported from subtropical countries and used in tire production. However unlike the conventional rubber, it could be harvested more cost-effectively, better cultivated and grown in Germany as a sustainable raw material — even on land areas not previously suited for agricultural crops.

 
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Sometimes I envision God beaming down from heaven like a proud father; I knew they’d figure that one out eventually. Everything in My creation serves a purpose for mankind.
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Related:
This is just one of hundreds (thousands?) of recent uses for our planet’s vast diversity of flora and fauna that the relatively new science field of biomimetics has discovered. As Creation-Evolution Headlines says, there appears to be no end of ways to imitate nature’s designs. All scientists have to is keep an open (and Darwin-free) mind.